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Game Retailers Facing Digital Distribution Transition
This editorial at Eurogamer examines how the games industry is dealing with the growth of digital distribution — a transition they're handling better than other entertainment industries, but not without a few stumbling blocks of their own.
"The examples from other industries undergoing this transition are not promising, since they tend largely to focus on metaphors involving creeks and a distinct lack of paddles. Bricks-and-mortar retailers of music and movies have largely sat back and grumbled while their businesses were hijacked, first by online retailers of physical product and then by digital distribution services. ... Specialist games retailers who follow that model face little more than a decline into insolvency in their medium-term futures. Worse again, they face competing with far bigger companies to retain their slice of an already shrinking pie — as boxed game retail sales fall off in favor of digital distribution, supermarket chains are increasingly seeing high profile games as a worthwhile loss-leaders."
>Why should game stores stick around?
Well with the European Parliament being bought off by the large music and movie cartels, such that somone who is caught downloading a few dodgy torrents is kicked off the internet, and can no longer spend ANY money online, I'd say all those bricks & mortar distribution points may well see a resurgence in use!
Nice to see those large monopolistic bastards and their political bitches doing something for the little people, no?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
If you wait about a year or so, or sometimes longer, depending, games come down in price. Buying immediately at full retail when they're released is foolish unless you've got a ton of disposable cash.
As an example, when Half-Life 2 first came out, I waited, because my PC's hardware wouldn't have been up to running it, and I didn't want to spend $1000 or so just to upgrade to a new box so I could play one game. Within about two years, I built a PC that exceeded the high end specs from back then, for about $400, and took advantage of a deal where I got the Platinum Edition of HL2 for $5 on clearance at Best Buy.
I generally buy games "behind the curve", after they've come down in price, and after enough time for the hype to wear off, and for it to become common knowledge whether the game is actually that awesome or not.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I'll use Steam as a good example of digital game distribution because they are very good at it, although have room for functional improvement. Steam is a good thing, but I didn't start out feeling that way. Even now, I have issues with not being able to grandfather (aka register and seamslessly update) in my old retail games that Steam currently offers the same downloadable version of. They have a limited list of retail games you can do this for, but it's not nearly extensive enough. I priced my retail game collection and to replace it all with Steam version of the same games, I would have to spend a couple hundred bucks. There are a number of ways Steam or the original distributor that has a presence on Steam could handle this migration, but it's still disappointing to some degree. An observation I have with Steam is the failure to provide a premium option (ie you pay extra for it) to have Valve burn and mail a physical copy of the game(s) you want, default-configured for off-line play, that is still part of your profile of games.
On the other hand, I give Steam a huge tip of the hat with regards to being one of the first to stake claim and set up shop on the new digital frontier. It's obvious they are serious about providing a fair service for their downloadable content and return customers are their lifeblood. As a bonus, there's some quality free stuff on their site, so you can download the client for free and play games for free, or load up on "bargin bin" games on the cheap. Plus Valve and their partners are aware that with the new digital download sales model, there's room for hefty discounts and weekend promotions.
I think the old model of a distributor swallowing up developers to become "in-house talent" like EA or Vivendi or Zenimax is a fading concept. Distributors want to purchase more developers so they have something to sell, because the costs of retail operations and marketing are expensive. With digital distribution, the game distributor doesn't have to tie up it's money with talent acquisition, they just have to create lots of partnerships to promote and sell the games as inexpensively as possible and return maximum revenue to the developers so they can make more games so the cycle can continue - no development employees to lay off, no cost overruns due to protracted development cycles.
I keep coming back to Valve as a great example, since they offer so many services under one umbrella, but they also are very accomodating to game devs that just want to sell games and make some money while maintaining their independance.
I have a 12mb line and always seem to get a nice 1.2mb/s download rate from Steam. Also I find using Steam for the majority of my computer game purchases very handy, I can buy it from home, set it to install (and it does relatively quickly with my line), have it automatically update to the latest patch, and during those rare moments when I lose my DSL connection (happened twice last year, both lasting about two days) I can set it in offline mode and continue enjoying my games. Visiting my parents I installed steam, logged on my account, installed one of my smaller games (their computer is getting on in years), played it until I left and un-installed. Everything worked without no fuss. Considering that, for me, a computer game only have a few years (at best) expiration date this system suits me fine; and it is so convenient that I now buy more games than I did the years before I started using steam.
The Long Now Foundation
Games are computer software, and usually you pay for a license with them too (be it Photoshop, Windows or Visual Studio). Just because they're entertainment it doesn't change the fact.
The tl;dr version: Steam Support can really suck and that is the reason that many people hate it. See below for an example.
In my experience, there are three camps for Steam. Those rabidly against it due to the rights management, those who love it, and those who have had an experience with Steam "Support" and now loathe it. I'll give personal experience as an (anecdotal) example for you:
I bought Champions Online off of Steam on Sept. 7th.
To my dismay, when I attempted to activate my CD key, it was already activated. I called Cryptic for support, and after speaking to a couple of employees, was told that since Steam was my distributor, I needed to contact Steam to get a new CD key. i.e. it was Steam's fault. I submitted a support ticket with the requested information within an hour of buying the game. I received the confirmation email and a ticket number from Steam Support, everything to verify that they actually did receive my support ticket. Researching their average response time, I gleaned a community accepted value of "3 to 5 days".
Fast forward about 4 weeks (October 9th).
After weeks of checking, my ticket was closed with no reply. I logged in to check it, and status was set to closed. There was no indication that anyone had even looked at the ticket. I re-opened the ticket, left a polite but firmly displeased message about the quality of the support and restated my request to get this resolved.
Fast forward another 2 weeks (October 23rd, this past Friday).
I FINALLY receive my first reply from Steam support. It's a one liner asking me to paste my conversation with Champions Online support into Steam. Since I talked on the phone, I can't do that. I sent a note explaining this, and have yet to receive another message back.
The situation as it stands now, is that the close group of friends I bought Champions Online to play with spent about 5 weeks intensively playing it, and have since moved on to other games (Our usual schedule for many games). I'm now left paying $50 for a game I never got to play, and by the time their glacial support gets around to solving it, I've lost all desire to play.
I'm now a wary customer as well. I've been burnt and am now much more reluctant to deal through Steam, with their lack of phone support and awful online support. Given that my friends and I tend to consume at least one new game a month or so, they've lost a pretty regular customer. Due to my experience, some of my friends are also starting to buy games elsewhere as well.
Ah-ha, and here's rub #2 with Steam. You try that, and watch what they will do in retaliation: They'll suspend your account. All the games you have attached to it will no longer function.
That's another reason I won't deal with Steam. These guys have you by the balls the whole time, and you will play by their rules. Don't even think about giving Mother any backtalk.
If you chargeback they suspend your account, removing access to all the games you have ever bought.
I looked into it and discovered that little gem. It seems almost criminal.
Newegg dude. I have never had a bit of trouble from them when it come to RMAs, it was all 'we're so sorry about that and it will be right out" and never took more than 5 days total turnaround. I've even had them call me to tell me that an item I RMA'd was out of stock, so would I like the next lower model and a refund for the difference, just get a full refund and get something else, or to put a couple of more bucks on the CC and get the next higher? Hell when my bank screwed up the card I placed my Windows 7 preorder on they even apologized for that (which most definitely wasn't their fault) and gave me the same $50 price even though that promo has been over for months.
So if you are talking consoles, yeah i can see hitting Gamestop or another one of those specialty stores. I myself go in there every couple of months to browse through their little PC section for bargains. But for just about everything to do with the PC I hit Newegg, as the service is just top notch.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If they do that, report it to the card issuer (VISA/MC) . The card issuers are quite firm about how the people who use their cards are treated. Retaliatory behavior not supported by a court judgement could result in the vendor losing their capability to take credit cards. That's a healthy sized hammer.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.